Ana
by Grasspaw
Summary: Ti Ana was only seven when Skoochy met her. She limped right up to him, stuck out her hand and announced, "My name is Ti Ana, and I'm going to be your best friend."


**Explanation: In Central City Station on the tour or Republic City, you can see a group of kids playing behind Skoochy, and there's a little girl bouncing up and down watching them. If you look closely, it looks like she has a wooden leg and a weird sock thing on the other foot. And so this idea sort of popped into my head from that. It's more or less completely plotless, a sort of a character sketch from Skoochy's point of view. I guess I don't really own the character... or, I don't really own her appearance. But her past and name and personality... Pfft. Maybe. I'll just say that Avatar and Skoochy aren't mine. UPDATE: Okay, so I just re-watched the revelation... Turns out Ana's just wearing two different colored socks. :\ Eh, I'll just keep pretending.**

Ti Ana was only seven when Skoochy met her. She limped right up to him, stuck out her hand and announced, "My name is Ti Ana, and I'm going to be your best friend." He was eleven then, and he thought her to be the most ridiculous sight he had ever laid eyes on.

Ti Ana. He thought it was cute the way she said her name; sharp and crisp and completely unlike the rest of her. Most of the other kids slurred it together into "Tiana", but she always said it almost like there was another letter after the "Ti". But Ti Ana didn't suit her; it seemed much too formal. Ana fit better, being more like her - short and sweet and simple - so he called her that.

The other kids made fun of her, called her "gimp" and "peg leg". She never once let on that it bothered her; she laughed with them, and they laughed harder. Ti Ana had the best laugh. Anytime she started to laugh she would usually wind up on the ground, tears streaming down her face, howling with laughter. It was hilarious, but at the same time it was sad, because nothing was really funny enough for that. Only Ana thought that it was.

Ana wasn't... normal, not that any of the kids around Central City Station were. There was a rumor going around - a really nasty rumor - that said the explosion that took her parents and her leg also messed with her head. That she didn't understand things the way normal people did - which was true. That she would often go into her own world in the middle of a game or a conversation - which was also true. That she would suddenly clap her hands over her ears or else stare off into the distance at something only she could see - which was true as well. That she was insane - which Skoochy didn't believe for an instant.

Ti Ana might have been a little... unsettled, but insane? Definitely not. Just because she was different didn't mean she was really insane. Sure, he didn't understand what she talked about half of the time, and she didn't seem to understand him, either, but... Well, she was Ana.

She was pretty neat, Ana, but sort of odd looking. She was short, even for an eight-year-old, and she was missing a few teeth - they hadn't been there when he met, and they still hadn't grown in. He guessed they'd been knocked out by the explosion. A lot of people would keep their mouths shut to hide this, but Ana always had a grin stretching from ear to ear. She was probably one of the happiest people Skoochy had ever met, despite everything. Her dark hair was cut rather oddly and often stuck out at odd angles and was almost terrifyingly tangly. He knew, because he would brush it for her sometimes when none of the guys were around. Every time he did her eyes - one bright blue like a waterbender, one amber like a firebender, though she was neither - would light up and she would clap her hands happily. She was almost unbearably cute when she did that - not that he ever said that out loud. Her clothes were like those of everyone else that he knew: dirty, patched and frayed, and not the right size. She didn't have any proper clothes for a girl, either; she wore a shirt Skoochy had found in the garbage for her. It had once belonged to man, he knew, because it reached halfway to her knees. She had squealed when he gave it to her. But it was so big that one shoulder was always slipping off, and the edge of it would come flying up to show her underwear sometimes, so one of the girls found a tiny corset-like thing that acted as a belt; it was wide enough that it held the edge of her shirt-dress down. He was still trying to find her a pair of pants to wear, but he had had no such luck so far. It rather annoyed him.

Probably the cutest thing about Ana's appearance was the sock she wore on her right leg. It was white with blue and green socks, bunchy and stretched out, and reached her knee. Why she loved the thing so much was beyond him, but since she refused to get rid of it he did his best to keep it clean for her. It was probably a good thing, too, because her right foot was so twisted from the explosion she couldn't wear shoes; the sock worked well enough, and hid the thing from sight.

And her left leg... well, her left leg wasn't even a leg. It was a stick of wood that attached to the stump of her real leg with a dirty strip of fabric; Skoochy helped her tie it on in the mornings. He used a piece of stone to carve little drawings on it for her - little rainbows and clouds and stick figures. Nothing fancy, but she loved it and showed off his artwork to anyone who would bother to look. It was interesting to watch her walk; the wood was one solid piece without a joint in the middle, so she had to swing it far out to the side if she wanted to walk without help, which she usually did. She still managed okay, though; she could jump and spin and even dance a little on it. He'd seen her running a few times, though she couldn't go any real speed. He could keep up with her when he was only jogging, but for her sake he pretended he was going all-out. The grin he got in return filled him with an odd sort of pride.

She had lost her leg in the same factory explosion that had killed her parents. She didn't talk about it much, but Skoochy knew that she had been going to bring her "Mami" and "Papi" their lunches, as she did most days. She had just been about to leave when the room her parents were in just blew up for some reason that none of the kids understood - something scientific about a dangerous gas in the air that had come in contact with some flame - and the building had come down around her. That was why some of Skoochy's friends said she wasn't "normal" - like any of _them _were. She had a long scar, mostly hidden under her hair, where a falling stone had hit her in the head. Skoochy wasn't really sure if it was being hit in the head or the whole mental trauma thing of almost being blown to bits that had upset Ana so much, made her the way she was, but to be honest he didn't think about it much. It was too confusing.

She seemed okay with it, but he knew that she had nightmares sometimes because she always slept curled up against him, holding her wooden leg like some sort of doll. She would whimper and toss and turn and sometimes wake up screaming, and he would hold her until she calmed down. He was her favorite, he knew, because no one else could get her to stop screaming. And screaming was bad, because then whatever gang's territory they were in would find them and cause problems... But Skoochy rarely thought of that when he was rocking Ana back to sleep. Sometimes the others didn't even realize she had had a bad dream because she recovered so well; in fact, he often wondered if she had forgotten it by the next morning. She would be her usual Ti Ana self, laughing at nothing and dancing happily through life.**  
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End file.
